A Big Sales Tip

This is a big Sales Tip for you.

In the mid-19 60s there was a TV show titled "I Spy." The show featured Robert Culp and Bill Cosby.

The title of the show got me thinking about intelligence and how it can be collected easily today.

Years ago if you want to keep tabs on your competition you hired a clipping service.

This clipping service would scour newspapers and magazines and clip the relevant articles featuring the competitors you identified.

Talk about Neanderthal. Today you can do the same thing at zero cost, with zero time investment, and get the latest updates on breaking news immediately.

Here's how it works.

Go to this website: http://www.google.com/alerts Using a quick fill form you can create an alert by topic, by company name, by an individual’s name.

So now you can keep tabs, and I mean literally keep tabs on your sales prospects, customers, competitors, and even keep tabs on your company. You can keep tabs on the people and on the company.

I also suggest creating a Google alert with your own name to keep tabs on what's being said about you.

So here's what happens. Let's say you create a Google alert for Jim Meisenheimer. And you also create a Google alert for Apple Computer who happens to be your biggest sales prospect.

Anytime anything is written about Jim Meisenheimer and in this case Apple Computer you'll receive an e-mail with a link to what was written.

Can you see the potential of using this? As far as I know there are no limits on how many Google alerts you can set up.

Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic.

This is like having your own personal clipping service.

Some clever uses of Google Alerts include:

• monitoring a developing news story
• keeping current on a competitor or industry
• getting the latest on a celebrity or event
• keeping tabs on your favorite sports teams

Sorry – I gotta go, three news alerts just came in that I want to look at.